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Google talk has recently added a groupchat feature to their talk gadget. This allows multiple users to join a common channel, like IRC or a chatroom on AIM. This is a great feature, and I have personally used it a few times now for working on homework assignments with a small group. However, it is currently only supported (AFAIK) on Google's Flash-based talk gadget. This is alright because of its compatibility with anything that can run flash, but a flash-based client can only do so much. I use Pidgin as my chat client. Formally known as Gaim, this open source program can connect to all major protocols, including the Jabber network, which is what gtalk is on. So when I heard Google was supporting groupchats, I was eager to see if I would be able to connect to the server using pidgin, like I would be able to on any other Jabber server. Well, unfortunately, that isn't available (yet, I hope). It looked like I would be stuck using the flash client. However, there is a way...

I thought I would dedicate an entire post to the comic xkcd. If you haven't checked it out already, I would strongly recommend doing so. In my humble opinion, this is the funniest comic on the internet. It describes itself as "A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language." I enjoy it because it often pulls computer science into its humor. If you have time, check it out. The first 75 or so comics aren't that great (different style) but most of the others are worth reading. Bonus info: each comic has a "tooltip" which appears when the mouse is held over the comic. This contains a short note from the author about the comic, often adding to the humor. I didn't realize this for a long time, and I wish I would have.

I realized I never completed the half.com saga. Well I never did get the books, but luckily half.com was nice and honest and gave me my money back. So will I buy from them again? Yes, but next time I'll pay more attention to the ratings of the sellers I buy from. No more buying from someone with only 8 feedbacks.

It has been a while since I've posted here. I really don't know why I have a blog. I never post to it. But it is now finals season, and rather than continue to study Gaussian elimination with scaled partial pivoting, I decided to make a new post. Softball is coming up soon. I'm excited. Cari and I have been planning and working on this since February, and now it looks like it is going to pay off. We have a team, we have sponsors, we have jerseys, and we are playing a week from tomorrow. How exciting! I hope I don't perform poorly. I have a feeling I am going to be a bit rusty, but lets hope I don't make a total fool of myself. Here is my prediction, actually: I am going to start off surprisingly well (beginner's luck) for the first few games. Then I am going to get into a slump. Now here is where my path forks. Depending if I have enough time/motivation to practice over the summer, I will either work my back and become better than I was with the beg...

Linux is going to replace Windows. For me, at least. No more crashes, no more slow load times, no more Windows. Moving on to better things. Like Fedora Core 5 - it rocks.

Okay, so I got screwed by half.com. Two of my books were sold to me by people who have since closed their accounts, and have not shipped books out to at least 5 or so people each (I know this by reading the feedback that started about September 1st or so, people saying "I haven't received my book yet"). Luckily, I should get my money back because half.com is owned by ebay, and they have a money back guarantee thing. Cause otherwise I would be very mad. I'm mad as it is, cause now I need to buy them again and I won't get them for another week. I went practically a month without having books. Stupid half.com.

So a followup on Half.com is necessary here. I am a little disgruntled right now, because I didn't realize until after I bought my books that the estimated shipping period is 7-21 days. I bought my books in the early 20s of August, and I still don't have half of them. School has started, I have reading assignments, and no books. I suppose a lesson to be learned is if you are going to buy books from Half.com you should order them in early August. No later than the 7th, pretty much. Can't beat the price, though.